# Elder Mythos tags: #game/rpg/elder-mythos ![[Elder Mythos (cover).jpg]] ![[Elder Mythos - Masterless and Solo Mode (cover).jpg]] _Elder Mythos_ (Mana Project Studio, digital release Jan 2025) finally answers the question the cosmic horror genre has spent a century studiously ignoring: *why play the squishy investigator losing their mind when you could be the tentacled abomination doing the mind-losing to them?* This game flips the script entirely. Instead of a revolver and a library card against the dying of the light, you play the light's dying — Cthulhu, Hastur, Nyarlathotep, and their eldritch kin — competing to corrupt, conquer, or shatter the world while the one Game Master (the **Eldritch Master**, or EM) runs the pathetic nuisance that is humanity trying to stop you. Now, before anyone asks: no, this game does not have a sanity mechanic, and that is not an oversight. It's the whole point. The player characters *are* the horrors. "Madness" isn't a descending pool you watch tick toward zero — it is one of your four attributes, a weapon you use to annihilate the minds of the little people below. We'll get to why that matters. It's less survival horror and more a god-tier board game of cosmic chicken — resource management, backstabbing, and divine plotting, all run on a hacked **Year Zero Engine**. You're not hoping the monster doesn't find you. You *are* the monster, and you're annoyed the heroes keep getting in the way. ## Core Resolution Mechanics It's the Year Zero d6-pool engine, pointed at deities playing chess with human lives. **The Dice Pool:** when your Entity acts—driving a city insane, manifesting a shoggoth, whatever—you build a pool from: - **Attribute Score:** the four Entity attributes — *fear, madness, dream, violence*. You pick whichever fits the situation. - **Resource Tier:** the power of the Cults, Creatures, or Ministers (your "Unspeakable Resources") assisting you. Each adds dice equal to its Tier. - **Entity Traits:** unique descriptors that add a die when relevant. - **Modifiers:** EM-assigned **Bonuses (+1D/+2D)** and **Maluses (−1D/−2D)**. A fundamental rule: **you roll only your own dice.** No lending dice to your fellow horrors; godhood is a lonely business. If your pool somehow bottoms out to zero dice, roll 2d6 and take only the lowest. The universe is not on your side. **Resolution:** - **Success:** at least one **6**. You do the thing. The galaxy trembles. - **Catastrophic Success:** more than one **6**. You succeed so hard it causes problems — gain **1 Plot Point**, but roll on a table for a side effect (beneficial or chaotic, like sacrificing a Resource or starting a conflict). - **Complication (Failure):** zero **6s**. The action fails and the EM introduces a Complication — a Resource's Tier drops, you lose a Plot Point, the world shrugs you off. An intrinsic outcome, not just a "you missed." **Opposed Rolls:** when Entities clash, or an Entity challenges an EM Resource, whoever rolls the **most 6s** wins. Complications and catastrophic successes apply as usual. Ties sometimes end in mutual destruction or a stalemate, because godhood is messy. **Plot Points:** each Entity starts every Scenario with **5**. You gain them from catastrophic successes, from hitting your Design and Greater Design objectives, and from wiping out another Entity's Resource. You spend them to reroll an unlucky pool (once per roll), to power certain Actions and Powers — and, at the end of the Scenario, the Entity holding the most Plot Points declares victory. The cosmic apocalypse has a winner, and it's you. Probably. ## Scenarios, Rounds, and the Map A **Scenario** is one session: a description, **Objectives**, and a map of **Points of Interest**. Each round, Entities draw initiative cards (lowest goes first), take a single turn, and spend up to **2 Action Points** on: - **Declare an Objective** (1 Action): place a die showing a **6** on a Point of Interest — manifesting your intent to take it (or blatantly bluffing). - **Acquire an Objective** (2 Actions): roll, adding your placed 6s to your pool; if another Entity has dice there or an EM Resource sits on it, it becomes an opposed roll. Win, and the Objective is yours — and no one else can take it for the rest of the Scenario. - **Cultivate an Unspeakable Resource** (1 Action + 1 Plot Point): plant dice showing **1** to grow a Cult, Creature, or Minister. - **Acquire an Unspeakable Resource** (2 Actions): opposed roll against the EM (their pool = 1d6 + your placed 1s); win and your new Resource gets a Tier equal to the dice you invested. - **Attack a Resource** (1 Plot Point): smash your Resource into another Entity's (or the EM's); pools come from Tiers. Winner eliminates the target and takes a Plot Point; loser drops Tier by 2; a tie drops both — and a Resource at **Tier 0** is gone for good. Every Action and Power triggers a **Zoom** — a close-up scene where you narrate your Manifestation and the EM can assign Bonuses and Maluses, dragging the world and its poor mortal inhabitants to life. Everything is a beat of divine storytelling, and every beat can end with someone's cult dissolving into screaming. **Design and Greater Design Objectives:** at any time you can declare you've achieved an objective of your personal scheme, earning Plot Points — with the EM as final arbiter. Because of course the EM has the last word on your apocalypse. ## Powers Each Entity has a signature **Power** that bends the rules of the game in appropriately cosmic ways. Powers work like Actions but are far more potent — and most of them cost Action Points or Plot Points to invoke. Using your Power to make *The Yellow Sign* flash across two cities, or to rewrite time and space, is the kind of thing that wins Scenarios. It's also the kind of thing that gets the pesky investigators to finally notice you. Trade-off. ## Madness (Or: The Question That Kicks This Whole Game Off) Go looking for a sanity mechanic in *Elder Mythos* and you will search the 240-page book in vain, because the word "sanity" does not appear in it. That's not an accident — it's the thesis. You are not the fragile human mind eroding against the unknowable; you are the unknowable, and **Madness is one of your four attributes** — a tool for "annihilat[ing] minds, act[ing] absurdly, sow[ing] Chaos." You wield Fear to terrify, Dream to deceive, Violence to annihilate, and Madness to break the minds of everyone foolish enough to look. The only "insanity" in the book is described as a place "where insanity is licit." Because you're the one declaring the rules now. The horror that *Call of Cthulhu* spends a whole Sanity track cultivating is, in *Elder Mythos*, your currency — the stuff you do *to* the worshipers and townsfolk and hapless heroes below. It makes for a perversely satisfying inversion of the genre, and honestly, after a hundred years of watching investigators go slowly mad at the edges of it all, playing the thing doing the going-mad-ing is a genuine treat. ## Editions and Modes One core edition, a few ways to ruin the world: - **Standard Edition:** the corebook. Enough to destroy the world if you brought your own dice. - **Deluxe / "Unspeakable" Box:** the corebook plus an Eldritch Master screen, a tarot-sized card deck (for initiative and reference), custom Lovecraftian dice, and printed maps. - **Masterless & Solo Mode:** a supplement (included in some digital bundles and the deluxe set) adding flowcharts and journaling rules so you can play with no EM at all, or entirely by yourself. Perfect for the aspiring deity who finds other people "tiresome." ## Final Verdict I came at this expecting a gimmick — "you play Cthulhu" sounds like a one-sentence joke stretched to book length. What I found instead is a genuinely clever god-tier board-game fusion of the Year Zero Engine and scenario-capture strategy, where the backstabbing is the point and the EM is left wrangling the mortals. It is not the horror game in which your character's grip on sanity slips; it is the horror game in which you are the reason everyone else's does. If you've ever looked at [*Call of Cthulhu*](Call of Cthulhu.md) and thought "I'm tired of being the victim," this is your therapy, your revenge, and your power fantasy in one elegant little box. Play it. Then look at the cultists you've driven screaming into the sea and tell me it wasn't worth it. ## References - [Official Publisher Page — Mana Project Studio](https://manaprojectstudio.com/game/elder-mythos/) - [Elder Mythos TTRPG — DriveThruRPG](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/510564/elder-mythos-ttrpg) - [Review — No Dice Unrolled](https://www.nodiceunrolled.com/elder-mythos-review/) - [Kickstarter Campaign Page](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/manaprojectstudio/elder-mythos-roleplaying-game) - [Retail Listing — Noble Knight Games](https://www.nobleknight.com/P/2148281076/Elder-Mythos-RPG-Corebook)